Utah hooked into the Pac 12 at just the right time. Looking forward to the
alliance with the Big 10, too. Had it been in place next year, one of these
teams would have to be dropped from the schedule: Northern Colorado, Utah State,
BYU. All the big programs have a warm up game on the schedule (Northern
Colorado), so it looks like USU or BYU would be dropped.

Cougar
trolls, of course, would howl if Utah draws Indiana or Minnesota ("How did
you avoid playing Ohio State or Michigan?"). Sure would be nice to see
Nebraska up at RES.

Interesting line from the Forbes article regarding the money for basketball vs
football: "The March Madness money is actually a bigger financial benefit
to each Final Four team than the payoff from playing in one of the 35 bowl
games."

Storied programs have made the final 4 at least once....Utah
has done it 4 times, along with 10 sweet 16 appearances and 5 elite 8. And you
know that UTEP program that has a movie called "glory road" based on
them, ya Utah played them in the final 4 that year, 1966 look it up. If that
isn't a storied program, there are very few storied programs in the nation.
People are quick to forget a great program after a few bad years. There is no
way a program like this stays down for long.

Sorry Pugman looks like I was wrong..Utah has 15 sweet 16 appearances.

BTW, this last decade 00-09 Utah has more sweet 16 appearances, more
conference tournament championships, and just as many regular season
championships as BYU. And just so you know, that was arguably Utah's worst
decade of basketball since 1930-1939.

So in conclusion, Utah has
had more success than BYU in their worst decade of basketball, than BYU had in
arguably their best decade of basketball.

Loved the linked article from Forbes about the Big10-Pac12 alliance. Larry Scott
is so forward-thinking that everybody in the Pac12, and now Big10, benefits.

To all the Ute faithful: Yes, we'll have to endure the Y fans making fun
of the Utes' down year in basketball. But take heart, the Utes will never reach
the level of futility experienced by the cougs--it's funny their fans can
remember the 1984 football season clearly but have amnesia about the Y's 1996-7
1-win basketball season. And take heart in the fact that the Utes will be back
competivetively and regularly playing in Pac12 and Big10 venues, while the cougs
will still be playing on ESPN8 "The Ocho" at midnight from some
dimly-lit high school gym masquerading as a WCC arena.